A Mess of a Dreamer with the Nerve to Adore You
by HermioneGirl96
Summary: Nursey reads a poem about Dex at an open mic, and Dex hears it. T for swearing.
1. A Mess of a Dreamer

**Disclaimer: Ngozi owns the characters; I do not. **

**A/N: This story owes a lot to stories by shellybelle on AO3: the idea of Dex finding out Nursey likes him at a poetry slam comes from "polyglot," and the idea of Nursey having panic attacks is something I first encountered in "in front of the same small bathroom mirror."**

Nursey hadn't felt this much like a mess in years.

He honestly hadn't expected this semester to be this fucking _hard_. He hadn't been fool enough to think it would be easy; Samwell didn't make it easy to be a student athlete, ever, and too many of his class numbers started with threes for him to think that this would be some kind of academic walk in the park, the way his frog year had been. (That year had been hard on other fronts—see: Dex and Nursey's crush on him—but academically it had been no sweat. There were people who had trouble with the academic transition from high school to college, but for the most part those people hadn't gone to Andover, and none of them was named Derek Nurse.) But he hadn't counted on the way Advanced Creative Writing was going to fucking _gut_ him. Intro to Creative Writing hadn't been easy, exactly—he'd barely eked out an A—but it had been the sort of thing he could chip away at steadily, even if he hadn't been sure his professor would like what he came up with. But Advanced Creative Writing. Not only was he just as uncertain about his professor's favor as he had been during Intro, but now the workload was such that he felt compelled to spend every minute writing when he didn't absolutely need to be doing something else. Hadn't anyone ever told Dr. Fretheim that creativity took _time_?

There wasn't time for worldbuilding these days, or even for really detailed character work, especially not when he was in practice multiple hours a day and on roadies at least every other weekend. So Nursey did what he always did in a writerly pinch: he stole from real life. He knew it was a common tactic for writers; he wasn't worried about it from that perspective. What _did_ worry him was how much he was writing about Dex. Sure, Nursey was also writing about his childhood and Andover and all the fucking rest of it, but Dex just kept cropping up, all over the place. Dex and his politics. Dex and his stick handling (and no, that was not a euphemism, much though Nursey wished it could be). Dex and his checking. Dex and his flannels. Dex and his fucking _arms_.

Nursey spun stories and produced poems, as assigned, and in those stories and poems amber eyes met green and sparks flew. Freckled skin touched brown and stars aligned. Whoever they were—neighbors, coworkers, enemies, friends—and however they met, fictional Nursey and fictional Dex wound up together. They _belonged_ together. Because Nursey was pining for his D-man.

He knew he shouldn't. He knew that, even though Ransom and Holster made it look easy, those two were a once-in-a-century D-man couple, that romantic lightning wouldn't strike Samwell's defensemen twice in one decade. He knew Dex would never slide an easy arm around him the way Holster did with Ransom, that Dex would never be his first call in a panic attack the way Holster was for Ransom. He knew that, even when he and Dex had chemistry on the ice, they weren't that same kind of drift compatible that Ransom and Holster were.

Nursey knew all of this. He knew he was just dreaming—just a mess of a dreamer, to quote Taylor Swift. It just didn't stop him from _wanting_.

Advanced Creative Writing always hosted a mandatory open mic at the end of the semester to show off the students' work. Nursey very deliberately didn't tell the team about it, and being absolutely sure that no one on the team would possibly have read to the end of the campus-wide email about on-campus events to see the brief mention of the open mic was the only thing that gave Nursey the courage to read his favorite poem of the semester:

_White siding and crumbling concrete steps,_

_Blue hallways and a green couch whose mold_

_Might be developing sentience, _

_Curtained windows and pies in the oven, _

_And up the creaky steps, _

_Cracked floorboards that determined my fate: _

_I call this Haus my home _

_With as much fervor as I ever used_

_To apply that word to a Manhattan brownstone,_

_But what I really mean_

_Is that I live here with you. _

_If fifty percent of all coin flips land heads, _

_And fifty percent of all coin flips land tails, _

_Then no coins land on their sides—_

_It's impossible; we've already reached one hundred._

_You, my dear, are impossible. _

_No one told me that eyes could be amber_

_When we did Punnet squares in high school biology,_

_And no one told me that I was one pole of a magnet_

_Straining for my opposite—_

_And darling, if attraction is just physics, _

_Then I'm doomed to never understand it_

_Nearly as well as you._

_I had never wanted _

_To crawl inside of the mind of a scientist_

_Until you,_

_But you make me hungry_

_For balanced equations and computer code, _

_For a periodic table and precise taxonomies, _

_Because I want to know the landscape of your thoughts_

_And heaven knows I've absorbed nothing _

_Through osmosis, _

_Nothing through the brushes of your fingers_

_Or the drinks we've shared_

_Or even that one night in your bed_

_When I fell asleep on you _

_In the middle of an episode of Queer Eye. _

_Yes, I want to know the landscape of your thoughts_

_From the mundane to the fantastic, _

_But most of all I want the answer to the question: _

_Darling, do you want me?_

Nursey stepped back from the microphone as his classmates and their friends began snapping. The stage lights were too bright in Samwell's little black box theater for him to see who was out there, but he'd looked around before his turn to perform, so he knew approximately who his audience was. He took a bow and then made his way offstage and back to his seat on one edge of the crowd.

He'd scarcely sat down when someone tall crouched beside him. He blinked a couple times, eyes still adjusting from the stage lights, and carroty hair and broad, flannel-clad shoulders resolved into view.

Fuck.

"D-Dex?" he whispered as his classmate Marie started reciting her poem.

Dex didn't answer, at least with words; he just threaded his fingers through Nursey's and pulled Nursey up to standing. Nursey followed Dex to the back of the theater and out the side door, wincing as light from the foyer spilled into the black box.

As soon as they were outside, Nursey stopped walking and said, "Dex, I'm so sorry; I didn't think you were going to be here, but—"

"Did you mean it?" Dex asked. His tone was—hopeful? It couldn't be. Could it?

"Of course I meant it," said Nursey, not looking at Dex. "What good is poetry if you don't mean it?"

Dex glanced around quickly and then stepped toward Nursey, leaning forward until his lips captured Nursey's. The kiss only stayed chaste for half a second, and then both of their mouths were opening and Dex was sliding his tongue into Nursey's mouth. Nursey moaned in response and clutched Dex closer so that their bodies were flush. Their tongues probed each other's mouths as their hands found each other's hair and tangled in it. It was a long time until they broke apart.

"I suppose that's the answer to my question, then," Nursey rasped when their mouths finally separated.

"Yeah," Dex murmured, and then: "How long, for you?"

Nursey ducked his face to hide his grin. "Since frog year."

"Seriously?" Dex said, and Nursey could hear the strain in his tone, the attempt to keep from yelling. "We wasted so much time!"

Now Nursey looked up at Dex. "What, you too?"

"Of course, me too," said Dex. "Have you seen yourself? Or heard yourself? Doing anything, ever? Of course, Nurse. But you really—me?"

Nursey reached up to caress Dex's face. "Darling, of course."


	2. The Nerve to Adore You

**Disclaimer: These characters are Ngozi's. **

**A/N: Still hugely indebted to shellybelle, but this chapter and the way Dex sees himself draws on "I Know I Am, But What Are You?" by sysrae as well. Oh, and the moth/flame metaphor is from Rainbow Rowell's **_**Carry On**_**. Also, just a heads up: this chapter covers the same events from Dex's perspective. There's a good amount of internal monologue but no new events.**

Dex knew he was fucked.

His crush on Nursey, which had been going for more than two years at this point, was completely hopeless. That was acutely fucking obvious, and Dex was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them—he knew he and Nursey could never wind up together. Not when Nursey was so handsome it almost hurt to look at him, and so good with words that he won almost every argument. Not when Nursey had gone to a fucking prep school and Dex had gone to an underfunded public school without a single AP or IB class in the middle of nowhere, Maine. Not when Dex's body was covered in freckles and scars from years on lobster boats and Nursey had never done manual labor in his life. Nursey was way out of Dex's league; this was just an objective fact. And Dex had the nerve to adore him. All Dex could do was orbit him and hope that someday he'd learn how to avoid pissing Nursey off quite so often.

This semester had been . . . an experience. Living with Nursey was seven kinds of torture, beginning with the fighting and ending with the crush. Dex felt like a moth drawn to Nursey's flame, constantly stepping close enough to get burned. He just couldn't help it, couldn't stay away from someone he'd wanted so desperately for so long.

But being drawn into Nursey's gravity well wasn't the only thing making this semester hard to describe; there was also the way Nursey was acting. For the first two years of college, Nursey had seemed to have two settings: chill and pissed. But now Dex was seeing a third side of Nursey—the stressed side. He was clacking away on his computer (which had a mechanical keyboard, of fucking course; how pretentious and obnoxious could you get?) or scribbling in Moleskine notebooks at all hours of the day and night, pretty much whenever they weren't in practice. Dex wasn't sure if Nursey had always been like this and Dex just hadn't noticed because they hadn't previously been living together, or if this was new this semester, but either way it had him worried. Nursey was usually up when Dex went to bed and often also when Dex got up, occasionally even in the same spot wearing the same clothes. Everyone in the Haus lived on coffee, of course, but Nursey's caffeine desperation tended to outstrip everyone else's by a good few miles. Sometimes he was even sloppy on the ice, though that was rare and he was still a damn good D-man. Dex wished he and Nursey had the kind of relationship where he could wrap Nursey up in his arms and pet his hair and ask him what was going on, but instead all they could do was snipe at each other, so Dex tried to keep his temper in check and his insults to a minimum where Nursey was concerned, and he hoped fervently it was enough, though he wasn't even sure he knew the answer to the question, _Enough for what?_

Dex knew almost no one read the campus-wide emails about on-campus events, but he personally thought that was a shame. Sure, hockey and homework combined to ensure that he couldn't make it to hear most of the speakers who came to campus, and he wasn't interested in a lot of the clubs announcing their meetings and fundraisers and whatever-the-fuck else, but he wanted to make the most of his college experience, and sometimes that meant going to an on-campus event that wasn't affiliated with the hockey team. The boys would probably chirp him if they knew he read the emails, but he'd managed to go this long without them finding out, so at this point he felt like he was probably safe.

So, on the Tuesday before finals week, Dex read that English 3020 was having its open mic in the black box theater that Friday night. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly, since Ransom and Holster had always planned the kegsters and they were gone now, and Bitty was a good captain but he also enjoyed running off to Providence every chance he got), there was no pre-finals kegster planned for Friday night, so Dex put the open mic in the calendar app on his phone and made plans to attend. He'd never heard any of Nursey's writing, unless you counted the freestyle rap Nursey sometimes indulged in when drunk—the dude kept everything he actually put on paper strictly under wraps around the team—and Dex was eager. He wanted to know every side of Nursey, every thought that went through his head. This wouldn't give him that, but it would give him a glimpse. He'd take every glimpse he could get.

Dex didn't know what to wear to an open mic, so he settled on his usual flannel and jeans. Let everyone else think he was a hipster. Whatever. (_Was _he a hipster? His family certainly didn't seem to think he was still one of them, if he ever had been.) He was intentionally just barely on time getting to the black box, so there was no chance of him running into Nursey, who was sure to be early. Dex took a seat in the back and let his fellow Wellies' words wash over him. There were poems about relationships and poems about trees. One girl even wrote a poem from the perspective of one of Cinderella's stepsisters, and it was surprisingly okay.

And then it was Nursey's turn. Dex recognized the description of the Haus immediately, but his breath caught on the line "Cracked floorboards that determined my fate." That had to refer to the dibs flip . . . right? Where could this be going? A few lines later, it was even more obvious that Nursey was talking about the dibs flip. And then he said "my dear" and Dex nearly choked. This couldn't be—Nursey was so far out of his league—there was no way—was there?

Dex processed words in choppy bits and pieces, registering that at least some of them applied to him: "eyes could be amber." "Straining for my opposite." "The mind of a scientist." "That one night in your bed."

"Darling, do you want me?"

Dex found himself standing just as Nursey stepped back from the mic. He was pretty sure Nursey couldn't see him there, all the way in the back, especially given the stage lights. Dex moved forward as Nursey made his way to his seat and then crouched beside him.

It took Nursey a second before he said, "D-Dex?"

Dex hated the uncertainty in Nursey's voice, the raw fear, and so he decided he needed to be brave. He took a deep breath to steel himself and then threaded his fingers through Nursey's, pulling Nursey up to standing and towing him toward the door.

Nursey stopped walking as soon as Dex had gotten him outside. Dex didn't mind—they could talk just as well here as anywhere else—so he stopped, too, and turned to face Nursey.

Nursey's face was full of fear and regret. "Dex, I'm so sorry; I didn't think you were going to be here, but—"

"Did you mean it?" Dex cut him off, both because he needed to know and because he needed Nursey to stop babbling apologies.

Nursey looked at his feet. "Of course I meant it. What good is poetry if you don't mean it?"

Dex glanced around quickly—he'd never kissed a boy before, and even though he knew this was Samwell he hadn't quite shaken the fear that his middle school and high school years had imparted on him. He didn't want an audience, even though a part of him—the part of him that was starting to process that _Nursey wanted him_—kind of did, kind of wanted to show off this beautiful man for all the world. Seeing no one, he leaned in and pressed his lips to Nursey's, opening his mouth almost immediately. Nursey's lips parted in response and Dex wasted no time in sliding his tongue into Nursey's mouth. Nursey moaned into Dex's mouth and pulled Dex even closer, eliminating the space between them. Their tongues slid along one another, exploring, while their hands roamed each other's backs and found their way into each other's hair. It was one of the longest kisses of Dex's life.

"I suppose that's the answer to my question, then," said Nursey when they finally broke apart. His voice sounded rough.

"Yeah," Dex replied. "How long, for you?"

Nursey lowered his head. "Since frog year."

Dex wanted to scream. "Seriously? We wasted so much time!"

Nursey looked up at him. "What, you too?"

What kind of a question was that? "Of course, me too! Have you seen yourself? Or heard yourself? Doing anything, ever? Of course, Nurse. But you really—me?"

Nursey reached up to caress Dex's face, and Dex had to wonder if he'd died and gone to heaven. "Darling, of course."

**A/N: 100th story on FFN, holla! And I've taken some stories down over the years, so this is well over my hundredth fanfic, but still. Exciting!**


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